Is Video Marketing the Future of Education?

The Internet makes our world smaller and our classrooms larger. Have you noticed the rise in online degrees? That’s the university system using a digital format to educate students in certain fields. The Internet itself is kind of like space, with undiscovered planets of knowledge in various corners of this universe. Except we don’t need a spaceship to travel through it; we just need a URL and a laptop.

What the Internet does for education can be groundbreaking, depending on how we use it. Here are two educational tools I recently discovered:

Online tutoring with Professor Khan

Livestreaming your education events with Sid and Sam

Generation YouTube

20/20 recently aired Generation YouTube, highlighting all types of YouTube superstars including moms, recent college grads, singers and performers, as well as educators like Sal Khan. Khan has a site, KhanAcademy.org, and a YouTube channel with more than 76 million video views.

Khan takes 10 to 15 minutes per video and breaks down arithmetic (from Math 1 all the way up to calculus) and the sciences (including biology, chemistry and physics). There are also economics and statistics videos that I could have used when I was in college. Khan reaches the world—including Bill Gates’ kids—with his short, clear lessons. And as Juju Chang reported on 20/20, he is “using YouTube in a way that just might blow up the classroom.”

But what about your business? This model of serving by teaching could be good for your business—as long as your heart is in it.

Here’s another model.

Live Education

Organizations like HandsOn University, Technology Councils of North America and the Georgia Center for NonProfits are starting to stream their events live online. So instead of filming, editing and posting later (or never), users can register, attend in real time and engage.

As small business owners, nonprofits included, we have to create our own buzz. But what if you could just add the live feed to an event that you already have, and expand your audience that way?

One site that can help you do this is LearnItLive.com. And as Sam and Sid Slover, the brothers behind the site, put it, their goal is to give “more people access to education.”

LearnItLive is another tool that allows you to help a global audience. And that gives you reach and more attention, which is good for business, if you are ready to take advantage of it.

As business begin to truly realize the power of video marketing (I’m finally getting it), there will be more and more buzz about it. But how will you choose to use it?

If education (adding real value) is the new marketing, then here are the big questions:

What could you teach online?

Who would you teach it to?

How would you deliver it? Live in real time like LearnItLive or via made- for-YouTube videos like KhanAcademy? Or in some other format?

You can make waves if you want to. Khan says, “One person can produce something on their own without any extra resources and reach millions of people.” Of course, it requires a lot of consistent work but that’s the nature of lasting education and effective marketing. Effective video marketing is education. Effective education is powerful marketing for your mission, cause or business.